forms we seem to be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These forms we seem to be are cups floating in an ocean

of living consciousness.

 

They fill and sink without leaving an arc of bubbles or

any good-bye spray.  What we

 

are is that ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it

and drink it in.  Don't

 

be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night

and never knows the horse

 

beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along.

 

  

 

 

~ Rumi 

 

 

 

a harmony

 

When you do things

from your soul,

you feel a river

moving in you,

a joy.

When actions come

from another section,

the feeling disappears

Don’t let others lead you

They may be blind

or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope of God

And what is that?

Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail,

the trapped bird’s wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness.

You've seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment

Now see the invisible.

If you could leave your selfishness,

you would see how

you've been torturing your soul

We are born and live inside

black water in a well.

How could we know

what an open field of sunlight is?

Don’t insist on going

where you think you want to go

Ask the way to the spring.

Your living pieces

will form a harmony.

There is a moving palace

that floats in the air

with balconies and

clear water flowing through,

infinity everywhere,

yet contained under a single tent.

~ Jelalludin Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi 

translated by Coleman Barks

art by van gogh

source of joy

~ Rumi
performed by Coleman Barks

without cause or calculation

 

 

 

A lover doesn't figure the odds.

He figures he came clean from God

as a gift without a reason,

he gives without cause

or calculation or limit.

 

A conventionally religious person

behaves a certain way

to achieve salvation.

 

A lover gambles everything, the self,

the circle around the zero! He or she

cuts and throws it all away.

 

This is beyond

any religion.

 

Lovers do not require from God any proof,

or any text, nor do they knock on a door

to make sure this is the right street.

 

They run,

and they run.

 

 

 

 

~ Rumi

translation: Coleman Barks, 

from: Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion

 

opening

Opening the letter of the body's life

inside the words.  This body, your life, is a letter

to the king of the universe.

Go to a private place and open it and read to see if

the words are right.  If they

aren't, start another!  And don't think it's easy to open

the body and read the secret

message.  This is the most courageous work, not something

for children playing with knucklebones in the dirt.

Open to the title page.  Is what it says there the same as what you

have said it says?  If

you're carrying a heavy sack, empty out the stones!  Bring

only what should be given.

~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

the way of the heart - Rumi

like a creek

The way the soul is with the senses

and the mind, is like a creek.

When desire-weeds grow thick,

your intelligence cannot flow,

and soul-creatures stay hidden.

But sometimes a flooding comes

that runs so strong

it clears the clogged stream,

as though with God’s hand.

No longer weeping and frustrated,

your being grows as powerful

as your wantings were before.

Laughing and satisfied,

that masterful current

lets soul-creatures appear.

You look down,

and it’s lucid dreaming.

The gates made of light

swing open. 
You see in.

~ Rumi

from A Year with Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

photo by ansel adams

listening

What is deep listening?

Sema is a greeting from the secret ones

inside the heart, a letter.

The branches of your intelligence

grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.

The body reaches a peace.

Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.

The reed flute and the singer's lips.

The knack of how spirit breathes into us

becomes as simple and ordinary as eating and drinking.

The dead rise with the pleasure of this listening.

If some cannot hear a trumpet melody,

sprinkle dirt on his head and declare him dead.

Listen and feel the beauty of your separation,

the unsayable absence.

There is a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.

Give more of your life to this listening.

As brightness is to time, so you are 

to the one who talks to the deep ear in your chest.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears

when that one steps near and begins to speak.

~ Rumi

from The Big Red Book

translations by Coleman Barks

cry out

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.

There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save

anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,

they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.

If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come

so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard

your helplessness."

Where lowland is,

that's where water goes. All medicine wants

is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.

Blow the phlegm from your nose,

and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.

Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.

Take the cure for impotence,

that your manhood may shoot forth,

and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot

of your soul, and let it race around the track

in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed

so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness

to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,

so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you

back toward disease and death. 

~ Rumi

be helpless

Be helpless, dumbfounded,

Unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come from grace

to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.

If we say we can, we're lying.

If we say No, we don't see it,

That No will behead us

And shut tight our window onto spirit.

So let us rather not be sure of anything,

Beside ourselves, and only that, so

Miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,

We shall be saying finally,

With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.

When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,

We shall be a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

on finding a guide

You wear coarse wool, but you're a king,

as the soul's energy hides, as love

remembers. You enter this room in a human

shape and as the atmosphere we breathe.

You are the central pole through the nine

levels connecting them and us to absolute

absence. So that we can have what we want,

you give failure and frustration. You want

only the company of the lion and the lion

cub, no wobbly legs. That man there, you

suggest, might remove his head before

entering the temple. Then he could listen

without ears to a voice that says, My

creature. A month of walking the road, you

make that distance in one day. Never mind

gold and silver payments. When you feel

generous, give your head. My beauty,

you have no need for a guide. The one

who follows and the one who leads are

inseparable, as the moon and the circle

around it. An Arab drags his camel town

to town. You go through your troubles

and changing beliefs, both no different from

the moon moving across or basil growing

and getting cut for a bouquet. It doesn't

matter you've been lost. The hoopoe is

still looking for you. It's another

beginning, my friend, this waking in a

morning with no haze, and help coming

without your asking! A glass submerged

is turning inside the wine. With grief

waved away, sweet gratefulness arrives.

~ Rumi 

Coleman Barks, Nevit Ergin version

this giving up

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed

in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,

has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

live at the root

A lover was telling his beloved

how much he loved her, how faithful

he had been, how self-sacrificing, getting up

at dawn every morning, fasting, giving up

wealth and strength and fame,

all for her.

There was a fire in him.

He didn't know where it came from,

but it made him weep and melt like a candle.

"You've done very well", she said, "but listen to me.

All this is the decor of love, the branches

and leaves and  blossoms.  You must live

at the root to be a true lover."

"Where is that! Tell me!"

"You've done the outward acts,

but you haven't died.  You must die."

When he heard that, he lay back on the ground

laughing, and died. He opened like a rose

that drops to the ground and died laughing.

That laughter was his freedom,

and his gift to the eternal.

~ Rumi

fasting

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox

is stuffed full of anything, no music.

If the brain and belly are burning clean

with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.

The fog clears, and new energy makes you

run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits

where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue

in place of the Kaaba. 


When you fast,

good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it

to some illusion and lose your power,

but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing

out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents,

Jesus’ table.

Expect to see it, when you fast, this table

spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

~ Rumi 

translated by Coleman Barks

a mighty kindness

Be helpless and dumbfounded,
unable to say yes or no.

Then a stretcher will come
from grace to gather us up.

We are too dull-eyed to see the beauty.
If we say "Yes we can," we'll be lying.

If we say "No, we don't see it,"
that "No" will behead us
and shut tight our window into spirit.

So let us not be sure of anything,
beside ourselves, and only that, so
miraculous beings come running to help.

Crazed, lying in a zero-circle, mute,
we will be saying finally,
with tremendous eloquence, "Lead us."

When we've totally surrendered to that beauty,
we'll become a mighty kindness.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks 
 art by Picasso

back into the reedbed

Time to ignore sensible advice,

to untie the knots our culture ties us with.

Cut to the quick.

Put cotton in both sentimental ears.

Go back into the reedbed.

Let cane sugar rise again in you.

No rules or daily duties.

Those do not bring the peace of silence.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi - The Big Red Book

the Indian parrot

There was a merchant setting out for India. 

He asked each male and female servant

what they wanted to be brought as a gift. 

Each told him a different exotic object:

A piece of silk, a brass figurine,

a pearl necklace. 

Then he asked his beautiful caged parrot,

the one with such a lovely voice,

and she said,

"When you see the Indian parrots,

describe my cage. Say that I need guidance

here in my separation from them. Ask how

our friendship can continue with me so confined

and them flying about freely in the meadow mist. 

Tell them that I remember well our mornings

moving together from tree to tree. 

Tell them to drink one cup of ecstatic wine

in honor of me here in the dregs of my life. 

Tell them that the sound of their quarreling

high in the trees would be sweeter

to hear than any music." 

This parrot is the spirit-bird in all of us,

that part that wants to return to freedom,

and is the freedom. What she wants

from India is herself! 

So this parrot gave her message to the merchant,

and when he reached India, he saw a field

full of parrots. He stopped

and called out what she had told him. 

One of the nearest parrots shivered

and stiffened and fell down dead. 

The merchant said, "This one is surely kin

to my parrot. I shouldn't have spoken." 

He finished his trading and returned home

with the presents for his workers. 

When he got to the parrot, she demanded her gift.

"What happened when you told my story

to the Indian parrots?" 

"I'm afraid to say."

"Master, you must!" 

"When I spoke your complaint to the field

of chattering parrots, it broke

one of their hearts. 

She must have been  close companion,

or a relative, for when she heard about you

she grew quiet and trembled, and died." 

As the caged parrot heard this, she herself

quivered and sank to the cage floor. 

This merchant was a good man.

He grieved deeply for his parrot, murmuring

distracted phrases, self-contradictory -

cold, then loving - clear, then

murky with symbolism. 

A drowning man reaches for anything!

The Friend loves this flailing about

better than any lying still. 

The One who lives inside existence

stays constantly in motion,

and whatever you do, that king

watches through the window. 

When the merchant threw the "dead" parrot

out of the cage, it spread its wings

and glided to a nearby tree! 

The merchant suddenly understood the mystery.

"Sweet singer, what was in the message

that taught you this trick?" 

"She told me that it was the charm

of my voice that kept me caged.

Give it up, and be released!" 

The parrot told the merchant one or two more

spiritual truths. Then a tender goodbye. 

"God protect you," said the merchant

"as you go on your new way.

I hope to follow you!" 

~ Rumi 

from  One-Handed Basket Weaving

translated by Coleman Barks

.

soul and the old woman

What is the soul?  Consciousness.  The more awareness, the 

deeper the soul, and when

such essence overflows, you feel a sacredness around.  It's

so simple to tell one who

puts on a robe and pretends to be a dervish from the real

thing.  We know the taste

of pure water.  Words can sound like a poem but not have

any juice, no flavor to

relish.  How long do you look at pictures on a bathhouse

wall?  Soul is what draws

you away from those pictures to talk with the old woman

who sits outside by the door

in the sun.  She's half blind, but she has what soul loves

to flow into.  She's kind, she weeps.

She makes quick personal decisions, and laughs so easily.

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

from The Soul of Rumi

art by van gogh

word fog

Words, even if they come from

the soul, hide the soul, as fog

rising off the sea covers the sea,

the coast, the fish, the pearls.

It's noble work to build coherent

philosophical discourses, but

they block out the sun of truth.

See God's qualities as an ocean,

this world as foam on the purity

of that. Brush away and look

through the alphabet to essence,

as you do the hair covering your

beloved's eyes. Here's the mystery:

this intricate, astonishing world

is proof of God's presence even as

it covers the beauty. One flake

from the wall of a gold mine does

not give much idea what it's like

when the sun shines in and turns

the air and the workers golden.

Rumi

art by claude monet

my beauty in you

I see my beauty in you. I become
a mirror that cannot close its eyes

to your longing. My eyes wet with
yours in the early light. My mind

every moment giving birth, always
conceiving, always in the ninth

month, always the come-point. How

do I stand this? We become these

words we say, a wailing sound moving

out into the air. These thousands of

worlds that rise from nowhere, how

does your face contain them? I'm

a fly in your honey, then closer, a

moth caught in flame's allure, then

empty sky stretched out in homage.

 ~ Jelaluddin Rumi

.